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FrogMan · 06-17-2014, 02:05 PM

Race Report
Défi des Escaliers, 13K
Sunday, June 15th, 2014
Quebec City

Introduction
Quebec City is a pretty special city and I'm not saying this only because this is were I grew up and where have been living most of my life. It's an old city, with a very European look in the Old Quebec part of town, with many levels to the town, all split with hilly streets and staircases that connect it all and finally some pretty neat military buildings, like La Citadelle. Le Chateau Frontenac is also something you might have seen on pictures of the city...

There was two distances for this race, a 19K Super Challenge, with 3000 steps of stairs, and a 13K Challenge, with 1925 steps of stairs. As part of my season ticket of races, I had originally signed up for the 19K race but after my half marathon DNF back in May, I decided to ask for a change of distance and went to the 13K challenge.

They described the course type as "urban trail" and I think it defined it pretty well.

Here's what my Garmin watch tracked for my race, viewed with satellite map:

As you can see, some of it was on regular streets but some of it was on trails, undercover of trees. Some absolutely amazing path. At one point, we were even running through some tiny back alleys in the Old Quebec section of town, on some old style brick flooring, kinda uneven. That was really something special... As a urban trail race, they said that policemen would be at majors intersections but that the streets were not closed off so while they would try to stop traffic, we could have to wait at some point. I never had to wait, maybe because I crossed all streets trying to run with as best a pace as I could and policemen (and women

) seemeed to recognize my speed. I made a conscious effort to thank each and every policeman I crossed at one of those intersection and every volunteer I met who either gave me water or indicated the way going in or out a staircase. A policeman even replied to my "Thanks!" with a "you're welcome, don't let up!" to which I replied "you neither!!!" that made him laugh.

Expectations, pre-race, start
I was again without my cheer team as this was a loaded weekend for us. Our youngest son had a two day swim meet while my wife was dancing in four hip hop show for her danc school year end show and my older son had to go teach at the dojo.

Given that this was going to be a weird mix of a course, I had no expectations as for time or pace. I knew the winner of the M40-49 finished it in 1:10 or so last year so I thought I could probably do it in anything from 1:20 to 1:30 but otherwise, I really had no clue. Especially, as soon as we'd get to our first flight of stairs... I still had some odd feeling I get close to or under 1:15 since the winner of last year is the same guy that finished just ahead of me in my 8K trail race a month ago, and again just ahead of me in that Royal Descent 10K. I had some reference but really wasnt, sure how I'd handle the stairs.

Furthermore, I got into this race with some sort of odd pain in the back of my right achilles or lower right calf. It started on Friday after my last easy run. Don't know where it came from, if it was because I ran that last run with my older pair of Asics that are now up to 580 mileS or if I tweaked my ankle during the run and didn't realize it, but when I got out of the car on the way to work, I felt a twinge of pain close to the achilles, but a bit more on the side. It bothered me all day Friday, seemed to be better Saturday morning but when I tried to tighten my calf when teaching karate, I could feel it again very clearly. The odd thing is when I tried running straight forward, barefoot in the dojo, it felt "about" fine. Needless to say I'm not taking any chances from now on and will be retiring the Asics from my rotation.

Get to Sunday morning and on top of the ankle/achilles, my right knee decided to act up a little. I injured that knee, hyperextending it backward about 12 years ago. Diagnosis at the time was MCL strain. It never came back as strong but is usually fine when running forward with little lateral movement. Thing is, I sometimes get some point when going up on stairs and on Sunday morning, that pain showed up during my little warmup. Both isssues turned out to be non issues in fact, thanfully. The moment the race started and I got into full swing running, everything felt just fine and even though I got a bit nervous when I encountered my first stairs, it was all right.

Start was set for 8 am, with 6 runners going off every 12 seconds so we wouldn't get stuck at the first staircase that was only two person wide. The 19K participants went first, all 600 of them and us, the 13K'ers went after. I ended up finally crossing the starting pad at about 8:40, after lining up at about 7:40. That was one long hour of waiting... It was a nice sunny day though and the waiting line was under the cover of big trees, even almost chilly waiting. The whole race was under a clear sky but not too warm, nor too humid. Perfect race conditions.

As I said, I had no real expectations for overall pace based on the staircase we would face but from the race website, I knew we'd have about 2 km before the first stairs and that these would be going down. I also knew our last staircase would be a monster with about 310 steps going up, followed by about 2.5 km of running to the finish line. For a 13K race, I thought a 4:20 pace was sustainable for the first 2 km so I started off the gate with that pace in mind and was able to keep it going. Average pace over the first two km was 4:17 but there was some very steep downhill toward the end of that second km, just before we hit our first stairs going down.

Had a fun moment just before that downhill. The staged start worked well in spacing people out, especially since we had those 2 kilometers of open road running during which I did a whole lot of passing. At one point, I passed fairly easily a group of 3-4 young women even though they seemed to run at a decent pace. I could hear one of the them tell this to her friends in the middle of their conversation: "geez, that dude is going fa-ast!". Made me feel good, especially as I felt I wasn't really forcing it...

That first stair, even though going downhill was something else. Even though the staged start helped thin out the crowd a bit, that first stair still had quite a bit of people and was only two wide. About 4/4 through it, I got stuck behind a lady hugging the left handrail while a gentleman was walking the right side. There was actually two of us trying to get trough. We eventually got through and that really was the only time I got stuck behind someone.

The rest of the stairs are kind of a blur. Some thigns stick to your mind thought, like how footing isn't easy on stairs, especially the ones made of wood and that are undercover of trees early in the morning. For those wooden steps, going down, you had to be careful not to go too fast or you risked skipping a step and skidding down 10-15 steps on your rear end. Then the ones going up, well, you know how it goes, start up running, then thighs burning, lungs on fire so you slow down and then look at your watch, current pace indicates something like 17:00/km, it becomes a mental struggle more than anything, ouch...

You can see the wildly fluctuating pace here:

As if it was possible, there was worse than going up some flight of stairs. Going up, I kept my eyes on my feet, trying not to trip and hit a shin or drop to my knees. I remember at least a couple of instances where I lifted my eyes just as I came up from the last step, trying to find the orange markings we'd been told to look for on the ground when trying to find your way, then finding the markings and looking up to face a daunting hill. AAARRRGG!!! Suck it up buttercup, I started the engine and started pushing them legs, thighs on fire and all.

As I said, based on the course plan, I thought we'd have about 2.5 km of straight running back to the finish line after the last staircase going up. It turns out it was more like 4 km or so. Not that I'm complaining but it meant managing my pace even more important if I didn't want to fall flat on my face with about one kilometer to go. The first two of those kilometers were on a nice trail under the trees, with some of it going downhill. I've never been to Central Park, NY but from all the pictures I've seen, you could imagine something similar, a green spot in the middle of a busy city. That was gorgeous, a place I've never been to before, even if I'm from the area. Shame on me. We then headed back out of the woods and to the street for about 1.5 km of a slight downhill (from -1% to -3%) that was very welcomed. I had sorta latched on to a young man with a bright red shirt when we were in the woods, keeping him in my sights, trying to stay pace to pace with him. He stayed ahead of me for a long while but as I picked up my pace back on the streets with about a mile to go, I was able to pass him and stayed ahead. I looked over my shoulder every once in a while and could see him pushing hard but not getting closer. He seeked me out just past the finished line to shake my hand, it was a nice moment.

I was very happy with the strong push I was able to muster to finish the race. Averaged 4:07/km (6:37/mile) over the last 1.91 km, and even as fast as 3:51/km (6:11/mile) over the last 410 meters. They'd said the challenge was roughly 13.5K. The bibs were identified simply "13K" (as opposed to "19K" for the super challenge bibs). My watch, started straight from the starting mat, tracked 13.91 km. They have since explained on their facebook page that the course had to be somewhat altered since some of the staircases were being repaired and maybe it was closer to 14K than actually 13 or even 13.5K. Didn't matter to me either way as it's not a standard distance, nor a standard kind of race anyway. It only looks deceiving when you look at their calculated pace on the timing website since they divided by 13 for their "per km" pace...

Overall on the race, I had my hydration belt but I drank from cups at about every water station except one spot where I took it from my belt. I also nearly drowned myself on the first stop. I had planned to walk to drink but didn't slow down enough at the first one and took a gulp through both my nose and throat and seriously, I gagged and was certainl I'd drown and die right then and there... :o It went much better after that. I also took a peanut butter GU after about 40 minutes and it went down quite okay. That's one of those spots where I drank from my hydration belt bottles...

Just read this and yeah, that's what I looked like

Official results:
finish time: 1:14:18.9 for 13.91 km
average pace: 5:21/km (8:36/mile)

That pace comes to 5:43/km if you divide by only 13 km. Again not that big a deal.

Placements:
37th overall out of 1165 finishers, or top 3.2%
36th out of 448 men, or top 8%
6th out of 111 in my category M40-49, or top 5.4%

I don't really set placement goals for myself but I have found that looking these up was a big indicator of how far I've come since I started running. For example, in my very first race, that much smaller 10K back in August last year, I placed 69th overall out of only 247 finishers, or a top 27.9%.

I'm pretty proud of what I've done and yet, I have the feeling there's still so much untapped potential in those legs. I knew the last staircase was abotu 310 steps and I don't know why, but I dreaded it before it even happened. It's only once I was done with it and realized it was the last that I thought I had held back and could have pushed harder. I plan on doing this race again next year but then, I'll know what to expect. I will slowly but steadily still keep on training, for now running 6 times a week. Those recovery and easy 7 km runs on Mondays and Wednesdays are fun and with the weather so nice, summer will be a great time.

Ankle/achilles/calf was fine after the race and remained fine so far. Calves are aching most of all, especially the right one. I probably favored it to compensate for the ankle/achilles. But I ran a recovery run on Monday (7 km) and even did a mini-hills workout this morning, 4x 180m 5% grade @ 5K pace without feeling pain. Life is good.

In the "comparison to others" department, Luc Desmeules edged me again, finishing 5th in M40-49 (25th overall) with a time of 1:11:59. I did finish ahead of Patrick Lemelin though, yay! He finished 10th in M40-49 (54th overall) with a time of 1:16:41.

The overall winner finished in 1:01:41 . Not to say I was within shouting distance but that's not THAT far ahead. Winner of M40-49 finished 3rd overall, in 1:04:14, 10 minutes ahead of me...

Here's a post race selfie for ya all

Next race will be a 5K on July 4th, my first officialy timed 5K. I also got our 10yo to sign up for the 2K event of that day. It'll be his first running race. Even though he is a swimmer and has got a pretty amazing cardio, we'll need to work on his running and pacing a bit...

That was again a long and wordy report. If you're still reading, thank you very much. I had fun racing it, probably just as much fun writing the report as it reminded me of the race.

FM

06-17-2014, 02:05 PM	#121
FrogMan Hattrick Moderator Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Pintendre, Qc, Canada	Race Report Défi des Escaliers, 13K Sunday, June 15th, 2014 Quebec City Introduction Quebec City is a pretty special city and I'm not saying this only because this is were I grew up and where have been living most of my life. It's an old city, with a very European look in the Old Quebec part of town, with many levels to the town, all split with hilly streets and staircases that connect it all and finally some pretty neat military buildings, like La Citadelle. Le Chateau Frontenac is also something you might have seen on pictures of the city... There was two distances for this race, a 19K Super Challenge, with 3000 steps of stairs, and a 13K Challenge, with 1925 steps of stairs. As part of my season ticket of races, I had originally signed up for the 19K race but after my half marathon DNF back in May, I decided to ask for a change of distance and went to the 13K challenge. They described the course type as "urban trail" and I think it defined it pretty well. Here's what my Garmin watch tracked for my race, viewed with satellite map: As you can see, some of it was on regular streets but some of it was on trails, undercover of trees. Some absolutely amazing path. At one point, we were even running through some tiny back alleys in the Old Quebec section of town, on some old style brick flooring, kinda uneven. That was really something special... As a urban trail race, they said that policemen would be at majors intersections but that the streets were not closed off so while they would try to stop traffic, we could have to wait at some point. I never had to wait, maybe because I crossed all streets trying to run with as best a pace as I could and policemen (and women ) seemeed to recognize my speed. I made a conscious effort to thank each and every policeman I crossed at one of those intersection and every volunteer I met who either gave me water or indicated the way going in or out a staircase. A policeman even replied to my "Thanks!" with a "you're welcome, don't let up!" to which I replied "you neither!!!" that made him laugh. Expectations, pre-race, start I was again without my cheer team as this was a loaded weekend for us. Our youngest son had a two day swim meet while my wife was dancing in four hip hop show for her danc school year end show and my older son had to go teach at the dojo. Given that this was going to be a weird mix of a course, I had no expectations as for time or pace. I knew the winner of the M40-49 finished it in 1:10 or so last year so I thought I could probably do it in anything from 1:20 to 1:30 but otherwise, I really had no clue. Especially, as soon as we'd get to our first flight of stairs... I still had some odd feeling I get close to or under 1:15 since the winner of last year is the same guy that finished just ahead of me in my 8K trail race a month ago, and again just ahead of me in that Royal Descent 10K. I had some reference but really wasnt, sure how I'd handle the stairs. Furthermore, I got into this race with some sort of odd pain in the back of my right achilles or lower right calf. It started on Friday after my last easy run. Don't know where it came from, if it was because I ran that last run with my older pair of Asics that are now up to 580 mileS or if I tweaked my ankle during the run and didn't realize it, but when I got out of the car on the way to work, I felt a twinge of pain close to the achilles, but a bit more on the side. It bothered me all day Friday, seemed to be better Saturday morning but when I tried to tighten my calf when teaching karate, I could feel it again very clearly. The odd thing is when I tried running straight forward, barefoot in the dojo, it felt "about" fine. Needless to say I'm not taking any chances from now on and will be retiring the Asics from my rotation. Get to Sunday morning and on top of the ankle/achilles, my right knee decided to act up a little. I injured that knee, hyperextending it backward about 12 years ago. Diagnosis at the time was MCL strain. It never came back as strong but is usually fine when running forward with little lateral movement. Thing is, I sometimes get some point when going up on stairs and on Sunday morning, that pain showed up during my little warmup. Both isssues turned out to be non issues in fact, thanfully. The moment the race started and I got into full swing running, everything felt just fine and even though I got a bit nervous when I encountered my first stairs, it was all right. Start was set for 8 am, with 6 runners going off every 12 seconds so we wouldn't get stuck at the first staircase that was only two person wide. The 19K participants went first, all 600 of them and us, the 13K'ers went after. I ended up finally crossing the starting pad at about 8:40, after lining up at about 7:40. That was one long hour of waiting... It was a nice sunny day though and the waiting line was under the cover of big trees, even almost chilly waiting. The whole race was under a clear sky but not too warm, nor too humid. Perfect race conditions. As I said, I had no real expectations for overall pace based on the staircase we would face but from the race website, I knew we'd have about 2 km before the first stairs and that these would be going down. I also knew our last staircase would be a monster with about 310 steps going up, followed by about 2.5 km of running to the finish line. For a 13K race, I thought a 4:20 pace was sustainable for the first 2 km so I started off the gate with that pace in mind and was able to keep it going. Average pace over the first two km was 4:17 but there was some very steep downhill toward the end of that second km, just before we hit our first stairs going down. Had a fun moment just before that downhill. The staged start worked well in spacing people out, especially since we had those 2 kilometers of open road running during which I did a whole lot of passing. At one point, I passed fairly easily a group of 3-4 young women even though they seemed to run at a decent pace. I could hear one of the them tell this to her friends in the middle of their conversation: "geez, that dude is going fa-ast!". Made me feel good, especially as I felt I wasn't really forcing it... That first stair, even though going downhill was something else. Even though the staged start helped thin out the crowd a bit, that first stair still had quite a bit of people and was only two wide. About 4/4 through it, I got stuck behind a lady hugging the left handrail while a gentleman was walking the right side. There was actually two of us trying to get trough. We eventually got through and that really was the only time I got stuck behind someone. The rest of the stairs are kind of a blur. Some thigns stick to your mind thought, like how footing isn't easy on stairs, especially the ones made of wood and that are undercover of trees early in the morning. For those wooden steps, going down, you had to be careful not to go too fast or you risked skipping a step and skidding down 10-15 steps on your rear end. Then the ones going up, well, you know how it goes, start up running, then thighs burning, lungs on fire so you slow down and then look at your watch, current pace indicates something like 17:00/km, it becomes a mental struggle more than anything, ouch... You can see the wildly fluctuating pace here: As if it was possible, there was worse than going up some flight of stairs. Going up, I kept my eyes on my feet, trying not to trip and hit a shin or drop to my knees. I remember at least a couple of instances where I lifted my eyes just as I came up from the last step, trying to find the orange markings we'd been told to look for on the ground when trying to find your way, then finding the markings and looking up to face a daunting hill. AAARRRGG!!! Suck it up buttercup, I started the engine and started pushing them legs, thighs on fire and all. As I said, based on the course plan, I thought we'd have about 2.5 km of straight running back to the finish line after the last staircase going up. It turns out it was more like 4 km or so. Not that I'm complaining but it meant managing my pace even more important if I didn't want to fall flat on my face with about one kilometer to go. The first two of those kilometers were on a nice trail under the trees, with some of it going downhill. I've never been to Central Park, NY but from all the pictures I've seen, you could imagine something similar, a green spot in the middle of a busy city. That was gorgeous, a place I've never been to before, even if I'm from the area. Shame on me. We then headed back out of the woods and to the street for about 1.5 km of a slight downhill (from -1% to -3%) that was very welcomed. I had sorta latched on to a young man with a bright red shirt when we were in the woods, keeping him in my sights, trying to stay pace to pace with him. He stayed ahead of me for a long while but as I picked up my pace back on the streets with about a mile to go, I was able to pass him and stayed ahead. I looked over my shoulder every once in a while and could see him pushing hard but not getting closer. He seeked me out just past the finished line to shake my hand, it was a nice moment. I was very happy with the strong push I was able to muster to finish the race. Averaged 4:07/km (6:37/mile) over the last 1.91 km, and even as fast as 3:51/km (6:11/mile) over the last 410 meters. They'd said the challenge was roughly 13.5K. The bibs were identified simply "13K" (as opposed to "19K" for the super challenge bibs). My watch, started straight from the starting mat, tracked 13.91 km. They have since explained on their facebook page that the course had to be somewhat altered since some of the staircases were being repaired and maybe it was closer to 14K than actually 13 or even 13.5K. Didn't matter to me either way as it's not a standard distance, nor a standard kind of race anyway. It only looks deceiving when you look at their calculated pace on the timing website since they divided by 13 for their "per km" pace... Overall on the race, I had my hydration belt but I drank from cups at about every water station except one spot where I took it from my belt. I also nearly drowned myself on the first stop. I had planned to walk to drink but didn't slow down enough at the first one and took a gulp through both my nose and throat and seriously, I gagged and was certainl I'd drown and die right then and there... :o It went much better after that. I also took a peanut butter GU after about 40 minutes and it went down quite okay. That's one of those spots where I drank from my hydration belt bottles... Just read this and yeah, that's what I looked like Official results: finish time: 1:14:18.9 for 13.91 km average pace: 5:21/km (8:36/mile) That pace comes to 5:43/km if you divide by only 13 km. Again not that big a deal. Placements: 37th overall out of 1165 finishers, or top 3.2% 36th out of 448 men, or top 8% 6th out of 111 in my category M40-49, or top 5.4% I don't really set placement goals for myself but I have found that looking these up was a big indicator of how far I've come since I started running. For example, in my very first race, that much smaller 10K back in August last year, I placed 69th overall out of only 247 finishers, or a top 27.9%. I'm pretty proud of what I've done and yet, I have the feeling there's still so much untapped potential in those legs. I knew the last staircase was abotu 310 steps and I don't know why, but I dreaded it before it even happened. It's only once I was done with it and realized it was the last that I thought I had held back and could have pushed harder. I plan on doing this race again next year but then, I'll know what to expect. I will slowly but steadily still keep on training, for now running 6 times a week. Those recovery and easy 7 km runs on Mondays and Wednesdays are fun and with the weather so nice, summer will be a great time. Ankle/achilles/calf was fine after the race and remained fine so far. Calves are aching most of all, especially the right one. I probably favored it to compensate for the ankle/achilles. But I ran a recovery run on Monday (7 km) and even did a mini-hills workout this morning, 4x 180m 5% grade @ 5K pace without feeling pain. Life is good. In the "comparison to others" department, Luc Desmeules edged me again, finishing 5th in M40-49 (25th overall) with a time of 1:11:59. I did finish ahead of Patrick Lemelin though, yay! He finished 10th in M40-49 (54th overall) with a time of 1:16:41. The overall winner finished in 1:01:41 . Not to say I was within shouting distance but that's not THAT far ahead. Winner of M40-49 finished 3rd overall, in 1:04:14, 10 minutes ahead of me... Here's a post race selfie for ya all Next race will be a 5K on July 4th, my first officialy timed 5K. I also got our 10yo to sign up for the 2K event of that day. It'll be his first running race. Even though he is a swimmer and has got a pretty amazing cardio, we'll need to work on his running and pacing a bit... That was again a long and wordy report. If you're still reading, thank you very much. I had fun racing it, probably just as much fun writing the report as it reminded me of the race. FM __________________ A Black Belt is a White Belt who refused to give up... follow my story: The real life story of a running frog...